Sunday, November 4, 2012

"China's economic destiny in doubt after leadership shock"

As far as I know Ambrose is the first Anglo journalist to take such a dim view of the leadership "change" but some of my Mandarin speaking friends have similar thoughts on what they are reading.
This is a potentially huge deal.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writing at the Telegraph:

The forces of reaction and economic folly threaten to prevail in China. The
long political arm of Jiang Zemin has reached out from the shadows to thwart
reform, with huge implications for Asia and the world.

If reports from the Hong Kong press and
China's blogosphere are correct, a remarkable upset has occurred on the
eve of the ten-year power shift next week -- the greatest turn-over of
top cadres since Mao's revolution.Photo: Reuters

If reports from the Hong Kong press and China's
blogosphere are correct, a remarkable upset has occurred on the eve of the
ten-year power shift next week -- the greatest turn-over of top cadres since
Mao's revolution.

The 86-year Mr Jiang -- who rose to supreme leader on the bones of Muxidi and
Tiananmen in 1989 -- has placed his accolytes in charge of the economy,
propaganda, as well as the Shanghai party machine.

The hardliners seem poised to snatch control of the seven-man Committee, tying
the hands of incoming president Xi Xinping and premier Li Keqiang. If
confirmed, long-term investors may have to rethink their core assumption
about the future course of China.

This power struggle going into the 18th Party Congress matters more in the
sweep of history than the run-off two days earlier between a centrist Barack
Obama or the centrist Mitt Romney, though the stage drama is less compelling.

Mr Jiang's rear-guard coup should give pause to thought. It was he who
instituted the Patriotic Education movement in schools in the 1990s,
whipping up nationalist fervour to replace the lost mystique of Maoism. The
effect was to nurture revanchist hatred against Japan, creating a monster
that now requires feeding.
His eerie return comes at a time when China and Japan are "one error away"
from outright war over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, to cite the findings of
four American diplomats in a report to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Stewart Patrick from the US Council of Foreign Relations likens East Asia to
Europe just before the First World War. It was then that Sir Norman Angel
famously argued that the great European powers were so intertwined by trade
and investment that conflict had become unthinkable. Nationalist emotions
decided otherwise....MORE